Barack Obama

Check out this speech about religion and politics from Barack.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvKX16Eygs0

Barack Obama is awesome. I get the feeling that he is agnostic but at the very least he is a down-to-earth guy. Unfortunately, even if he is agnostic, he would never be able to say this due to the political suicide that would follow. The smartest in our society are the atheists and agnostics, yet ironically the smartest aren't able to run our country unless they lie about it. It's all a big crap shoot.

Instead we get closed-minded douches like Bush and Bush Sr. They don't get the big picture, can't separate religion from politics, and are not tolerant of other views. Bush Sr. even went so far as to say:

GB: "I guess I'm pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me."
Interviewer: "Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?"

GB: "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

Seriously? And this guy was running our country?

Dawkins video

An interesting presentation.


http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html

Evolution is impossible because statistics says so...

Sorry that I haven't had a lot of energy lately to write. Today I will cover a topic that I've talked about before in an older blog.

When I was still in medical school, one of the surgeons was teaching a small group and decided to tell us his thoughts on evolution, daring us to disagree.

In summary he said that people have calculated the odds that evolution really did take place. They concluded that the odds of evolution are alike to a tornado going through a junkyard and creating a brand new model-T.

No one was dumb enough to disagree, myself included, even though his logic was flawed in multiple ways. I will briefly talk about the two most glaring flaws with the argument (I thought of a few more while writing but the semantics of analogies makes discussing such things difficult)

1. The first annoying fallacy is his use of statistics.

The gist of the problem is that ANY circumstance can be made to look amazing in retrospect!

Here is a quick example of such thinking.
There are 1000's of leaves on trees in my yard. Last fall, they all fell off and blew across the yard. They ended up in a distinct pattern on the lawn. Looking at this statistically, their were 10^999999999(who knows the actual number but it is big) different ways the leaves could have ended up.

So, is it amazing that they all ended up how they did? I mean--the odds were at least 1/10^9999999999. The odds of them all ending up like they did is alike to a tornado and a model-T. I should put up a shrine and charge money to see this amazing event! Is my yard truly special or is chance, in retrospect, a suspect science?
Evolution was simply one of 10^9999999999 possibilities.

Another way to look at it:
I am darn special. I mean--What are the odds of an MD with 2 kids who plays scrabble avidly, had a dog named wellington, owned a blue Ford Festiva for his first car, has only ever traveled to Mexico, Canada, and Guatemala, loves Indian food, names his first kid Anneke and the second Caleb, pees standing up, still has a baby tooth........
Wow, looking in retrospect, I could make myself extra special! In fact, I am akin to a whirlwind recreating the World Trade Center!!


2. He assumes that evolution is a completely random process. This is in a sense true however it ignores natural selection and the step-wise fashion of the process over long periods of time.

First the wheel would hit a hood somewhere but this combination would not "survive" because it didn't give any advantage to the new "organism". The wheel would combine with many parts, all giving no distinct advantage and not surviving. Finally the wheel finds synergy with the axle and the combination is better than the original for surviving in that environment. This axle wheel combination then would go through this same process again and again over millions of years until something resembling a car forms.....

A lesson in Geography

The gospels are written as first-hand accounts of Jesus' life and travels. It can easily be illustrated that these fictional accounts were written by people with little knowledge of the area. Below are a few examples of their geographic naivete.

1. The new testament refers to Aenon, Capernaum, Magdala, Bethany, Nazareth and Bethphage, yet there is not historical record of such places. (Capernaum was actually the name of a spring).

2. Mark talks of Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee and landing in Gerasenes. This is fine except that Gerasenes was 31 miles from the shore.

3. Later, in this same city, he has 2000 pigs run down a slope to drown in Sea of Galilee. Wow, quite a run!

4. Later Mark tries to give the specifics of how Jesus got from Tyre to the sea of Galilee. Tyre to Sidon to the sea of Galilee. This puts him 40 miles out of his way to travel the 30 miles from Tyre to the sea.

5. Jesus invites Andrew to join him on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in Mark. John writes about him joining in the made-up-city of Bethany.

Sociology of religion briefly covered.

This is an anonymous response to my blog that I thought worthy of posting:

"I think the concession needs to be made that the intended goal of most religion is indeed good, especially when considered within the context of their founding. They provided social stability, and should probably be seen as ancient analogues to modern governments and philosophical schools of thought. For example, they help to deter theft, murder, and adultery, among other behaviors that might have been socially undesirable at the time of their founding."


There are many books covering the psychological and social explanations for the development of religion. It is a topic that I have read much but probably won't post about because they are simply theories. For this same reason, I won't be trying to "prove" evolution. That said, I think that what was written above has much validity and I am "certain" that evolution does take place.

*I may not attempt to prove evolution but will certainly try to disprove the creationism theory.
**Anyone can feel free to send me stuff and I will be happy to post it, including theories!

new statistic

This is a statistic that I forgot to put on the statistics post. I considered just adding it to the previous post, but the number is so remarkable that I think it deserves its own post.

Depending on the wording of the survey, 4-12% of the US population are atheists.

Among 96,968 prison inmates in 1997, the Federal Bureau of Prisons reports a total of 156 atheists.

Let's do the math:

0.209% of the prison population are atheist
Put simply, atheists are 8-24 times less likely to end up in prison

Many people associate the word atheism with things like Nazism, evil, and Hitler. Clearly the stereotype is way off.

*Hitler was a Christian
** Nazism claimed Christian roots and practices

To hell and back

In an earlier post, I explained that the original wording of the bible does not speak of a place of eternal damnation. However, it seems silly for me analyze bible verses to prove a point, when in other posts I try to prove that the bible is untrue. Therefore I will revisit the topic from a slightly different angle. I will briefly go over some of my logic why hell does not exist.

1. God is supposed to be the ultimate moral being. Yet, what would be more unmoral then to send someone to a place of eternal punishment. Therefore, God must be unmoral, God doesn't exist, or hell doesn't exist.

2. The Christian God advocates mass genocide several times in the old testament; as if this wasn't evil enough, in the new testament, he then decides to sentence people to Hell. My choices are to not believe that such a god can exist, not to believe in hell or to simply to refuse to worship such a being. I suppose that another choice would be to worship such a being, but I think I'd take hell just on principle.

3. God created everyone with the ability to reason. Yet, when we honestly use our reason, one can come to no other conclusion then that god does not exist. If we don't believe in god then we go to hell. Therefore, god has sentenced people to hell for simply using one of his gifts.

4. God is omnipotent. God is benevolent. God is not forced to torture us because he is omnipotent, yet he choses to inflict torture on us. Therefore, God is not omnipotent or he is not benevolent or hell does not exist.

5. Most people do not believe in Christ. One must believe in Christ to go to heaven. Most people are going to hell. Either god is a sadistic bastard, he does not exist or hell does not exist.

6. People are finite beings. We live a finite amount of time. We are only capable of finite moral understanding and finite actions. Therefore any sins we commit are finite and any just punishment must also be finite.


*The church has attempted to camouflage these sorts of arguments with Christian apologetics and has dedicated libraries of information to try to explain away such logic. That said, anyone who has seriously studies Christian apologetics knows that it is a Rube Goldberg machine of semantics tied together with circular logic.

**I realize that many of my examples are variations of the same point so please don't bother to comment on such. Some people need to hear things in different ways in order to see the picture.

The numbers

These statistics should speak for themselves.

90% Americans believe "in a personal God and an afterlife"
96% of all Americans believe in God
88% percent affirm the importance of religion.

40% of BS-degree-only scientists believe in personal God or afterlife.
10% of higher-degree scientists believe in a personal God or an afterlife.

1998 survey of more than 500 members of the National Academy of Scientists
72% were atheists
21% were agnostics
7% believed in God.

Of people with IQ's over 140 (roughly the top 1% of the population)
Of men,
10% held strong religious belief
62% claimed "little religious inclination"
28% claimed it was "not at all important."
of women,
18% held strong religious beliefs
57% claimed "little religious inclination"
23% claimed it was "not at all important."


Mean SATs and IQ correlate
strongly antireligious 1148 SAT, 120 IQ
moderately anti-religious 1119 SAT, 117 IQ
slightly antireligious 1108 SAT, 116 IQ
religious 1022 SAT, 108 IQ

Hell hath no fury...

Hell. In my opinion, this word more than any other word has shaped the events of history. The eternal torment concept of hell is what has allowed Christianity to survive for the last two millenia. Bishops and popes have used hell to control the people, missionaries to spread the word of Christianity, and otherwise rational people have gone on to believe irrational things in fear of hell's wrath. In the next few paragraphs, I will show that the Dante's inferno type of hell that your preacher warns you against has no basis in scripture.

Hell and the old testament:
Going back to the original Hebrew, the word Sheol(hell) occurs 64 times in the old testament. That said, the word Sheol is not meant to signify punishment after death
but rather simply death itself. Translated, the word literally means grave or death. It was understood that all eventually went to Sheol. In fact, Jacob wanted to go to Sheol, Job wanted to hide there, Hezekiah expected to go there, and David spent some time there. The Israelites had no cultural concept of punishment after death.

The old testament in its journey to an English version has been translated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English. As you can imagine, much has been lost or changed in translation. Of the 64 mentions of Sheol, 32 have been translated to hell, 29 to grave and 3 to pit.

The word Gehenna(hell) occurs several times in the old testament and 12 times in the new testament. It is derived from the Hebrew words ge hinnom. Ge means wadi or valley while Hinnom refers to the owner of that valley. The valley of Hinnom is the wadi outside of Jerusalem. The first references to this word as a place of punishment trace back to 150AD. The old testament reference refer to it as a literal place.

While the concept of eternal punishment was foreign to the Israelites, the heathen world embraced the idea. Homer and Virgil both write about this form of hell in there famous works. By the time of Christ, Alexander the Great had unified the world and the Jews started to harmonize their religious beliefs with the Greeks.


Hell and the new testament:
The new testament was written in Greek and the word Hadees was often used to denote hell. The idea of eternal punishment was no longer foreign to the Jews, and in fact, most had added it to their religious traditions. So where did Jesus fall on this subject?

The word Hadees is used 11 times in the new testament. The modern bible uses the word hell in 10 of these 11 instances, grave in the other. In reality, the Greek translation in all these instances has the exact same meaning as Sheol, grave or death. I do not wish to break down every instance however 9 of them refer to destruction or death, while one of them refers to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Luke 16:19-31.

This parable follows several other parables and is not to be taken literally.

Hanson writes:
He then struck into this parable designing not to relate an actual incident but to exhibit certain truths by means of a story. It is clearly absurd to say that he launched immediately from the figurative mode of instruction in which he had all along been indulging, into a literal exhibition of the eternal world, and without any notice of his changed mode of expression, actually raised the vale that separates this life from the future! He was not accustomed to teach in that way.... Let the reader observe that the rich man, being in Hadees, was in a place of temporary detention only. Whether this be a literal story or a parable, his confinement is not to be an endless one.

If your still not convinced; a random internet search came up with this analysis of the parable from a Christian site (auburn.edu):
To regard it as a literal statement involves several absurdities; for instance, that the rich man went to "hell" because he had enjoyed many earthly blessings and gave nothing but crumbs to Lazarus. Not a word is said about his wickedness. Again, Lazarus was blessed, not because he was a sincere child of God, full of faith and trust, not because he was good, but simply because he was poor and sick. If this be interpreted literally, the only logical lesson to be drawn from it is, that unless we are poor beggars full of sores, we will never enter into future bliss; and that if now we wear any fine linen and purple, and have plenty to eat every day, we are sure of future torment.

Jesus was using the imagery of this parable to convey an idea to an audience that was familiar with such imagery.

Gehenna was again used in the new testament and translated to Hell. References to it are limited to a few people who refer to being thrown into Gehenna, the wadi outside the city. This makes much sense since much of the bible was written after 70AD, after Jerusalem was massacred. 600,000 died in the massacre and many were likely thrown into Gehenna, the wadi outside the city. Also, according to Hanson, "Jesus never warned unbelievers against it but once in all his ministry (Matt. 23: 33) and he immediately explained it as about to come in this life."

*In the New International Version (best-selling English Bible) the word hell is only used 14 times yet most of our theology and orthodoxy is derived from the King James bible. All of the above reference are to the King James bible.
**Many argue that the word eternity is never used in the original bible and should be changed in current versions.

Lincoln: A believable historical figure?

I recently finished a book titled "Land of Lincoln"
The author spent much of the book addressing myths of Lincoln. In fact, most of the book was him traveling across the country documenting the various misconceptions about Lincoln and the impact of these misconceptions.

Lincoln died in 1865. He was an American President after such advances as the printing press and the telegraph. The first biography of Lincoln was written less then a year after his death by his old law partner and good friend. Despite this, most Americans don't know how he truly approached slavery (freed slaves as a way to easier victory over south) and most historians disagree on much of his life. In fact, the author spent a good portion of the book pointing out things that are in debate about his life. There is very little information that has been substantiated as true. Many myths have developed about Lincoln over the last 150 years that simply aren't known to be true but yet are passed on through textbooks and oral tradition.

Jesus like Lincoln is a much celebrated historical figure. He died almost 2000 years ago. The point is clear; if we truly know little about Lincoln then what makes people so confident about the accounts of Jesus.

You can see that by technology and time, the comparison is not equal.

Consider:
We have many of Lincoln's letters and speeches which contribute significantly our knowledge of him. On the other hand, none of our writings about Jesus' life are from people who even met him. The below dates were taken from a Christian website (I agree with all the dates).

Uncontested:
Epistles of Paul: 45-68
Fall of Jerusalem: 70
Crucifixion of Jesus: 32

Traditional:
Clement of Rome: 96
Revelation (John): 96
Epistles of John: 90-94
Gospel of John: 85-90
Acts of Apostles: 66-68
Matthew & Luke: 64-66
Gospel of Mark: 64-65

Jesus Seminar:
Gospel of John: 85-90
Acts of Apostles: 80-100
Gospel of Luke: 80-100
Gospel of Matthew: 80-90
Gospel of Mark: 70-80
Gospel of Thomas: 70-100

Notice that the earliest writings were written 12 years after his death and these are simply Paul's writing. The writings that we glean most of our Jesus history were likely written 32 to 38 years after his death! I bet you thought that the book of Matthew was written by Matthew. Not true. In fact none of the gospels or epistles were written by Jesus' disciples. They were simply a convenient pen name for the true authors. (Also consider that the average lifetime 2000 years ago was less than 20)

Even if all of this doesn't draw into question the reliability of the new testament, one must consider that our new testament is pulled from copies of copies of copies. Many scholars have investigated copying errors and other likely intensional changes in text and have determined that many of the books are between the 30th and 70th copies from the original(that is, copies of copies of copies X 70). In fact, stories have been added as late as the 12th century, many inconsistencies of the bible were "resolved" with copying. In fact there are very few passages that are thought not to be changed with time. A notable example: the only explicit statement of the trinity found in the bible was added well after the original copy. Read "misquoting Jesus" for more information on this phenomenon; even better, here is an interesting NPR interview with the author,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5052156

Still not convinced. Well, there were in fact probably hundreds of gospels written. The new testament turns out to be a very small selection of texts from a large body of literature produced by various communities during the first century. These new testament texts were collected in the interest of a particular form of Christian congregation that emerged only by degrees through the second to fourth centuries. (Many of the other texts are still available)

Mack writes that
Thus, over the course of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, centrist Christians were able to create the impression of a singular, mono-linear history of the Christian church. They did so by carefully selecting, collecting, and arranging anonymous and pseudonymous writings assigned to figures at the beginning of the Christian time. (They didn't even do a great job of it. There are many internal inconsistencies in the gospels that I will go over some other time.)

He goes on to argue that the original writers wanted to tie their new religion to the Jewish tradition. They saw the Fall of Jerusalem in 70AD as a nice way to tie into the Jewish tradition. Thus they scribed Jesus as the bridge between the old Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem. He was written in as person who fulfilled old testament scripture, while at the same time rewriting the rules.

These are hardly fringe ideas either. Many argue, including a current bishop, that the gospels were written with much literary license, and that they were written with the purpose of fulfilling predictions of the old testament.(The bishop wrote a book about his thoughts called "Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes").

Fittingly I will quote Abraham Lincoln to close:

"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them." Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln

The bible as a moral compass

Many people believe that the bible is the word of god. In fact I was recently told that the bible contains all the answers of morality and that it is the ultimate moral guide.

But what of the bible as a moral guide? The bible is filled with moral repugnance that we teach our kids already in grade school.

Examples pulled from text by Richard Dawkins,
God drowns everyone in the world already in Genesis.
Abraham passes Sarah off as his sister, lets her marry the Pharaoh as part of his harem and watches as god punishes the pharaoh.
God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son exposing him to unfathomable psychological trauma. God intervenes
Jephthah asks for victory in exchange for the sacrifice of the first thing that comes to his door. Ends up to be his daughter. God does not intervene. ???
God tells the slave to obey his master- an argument for slavery for hundreds of years.
Moses orders 3000 people to be randomly killed in response to the making of the golden calf.
Moses attacks the Midianites killing all the men but the army spares the women and children. Moses is furious and orders that all the boy children and mothers be killed. "But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" (numbers 31:18)
Numerous death sentences for benign things including being the victim of rape. In fact Deuteronomy tells you that you should kill me because I am encouraging you to "let us go and serve other gods...but you should kill him"


I could go on giving example after example of atrocious moral behavior but the point is clear. The point is that if the bible is supposed to be the ultimate moral guide, than I must be missing something.

But wait! These were just stories and besides, cultures change and our religion changes with culture.

What? Now your just cherry-picking. You say that the bible is the ultimate moral source but than you decide which parts are moral? So who is the ultimate moral source than? Obviously not the bible. If you get to pick and choose than you are the moral authority, not the bible.

Again, wait! The new testament marked a new era in God's reign and Jesus made it so none of this is necessary.

This is still cherry-picking because if you are going to ignore parts of the old testament than you should just throw out the whole thing. That said:

The Golden rule is before its time however:
Jesus specifically says that all the old laws still apply, look it up, Matthew 5:18-20, 2 Timothy 3:16-17)
St. Paul tells slaves to serve their masters
"God deems it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you" 2 thessalonians 1:6-9


The words of the bible have lead to more deaths in the history of the world than perhaps anything....Crusades, holocaust, slavery, witch hunts, inquisition....(*-see below)

But still it happens today. People dying in Africa because the Vatican would rather people develop HIV than use condoms. The religious right wasting billions of dollars to fight abortion when that substantial energy could be used to feed hungry children in africa (ironically, the abstinence first programs and our countries fear of sex has lead to more abortions than most other industrialized nations as well as STD rates way way higher.). The current fight against the HPV vaccine which could stop millions of cervical cancers. Embryonic stem cell research opponents who prevent many life saving therapies. Add in the atrocities committed in the name of Allah, and the toll of religion on humans is unfathomable.

Sam Harris suggests a mind experiment. Take a step back and imagine the religions of Christianity and Islam replaced by Jainism which teaches "Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being". Imagine how different our world might be. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries. It is impossible to behave this way by adhering to the principle of Jainism. How, then, can you argue that the Bible provides the clearest statement of morality the world has ever seen.





*- this ignores all the deaths that have occurred due to our lack of technology. Without Christianity, one can easily argue that the Middle Ages would not have been a stagnant time in history. The Church burned anything other than scripture. After the Romans, the natural progression would have us developing the computer in like 1100AD. Instead people were killed and tortured even for entertaining the thoughts of truth other than what is found in the bible.

One true religion?

To be a true Christian one must believe that all other faiths are wrong. Call them mistaken, misguided, or led astray; in the end they are wrong and you are right.

To be a true Muslim one must believe similarly. They are right and you wrong.

Muslim beliefs are as compellingly true as Christians. The Koran states that it is the word of god. They would profess the truth of the Koran to the threat of death as much as you. (there are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world)

These beliefs cannot live symbiotically, Muhammad states clearly in the Koran that Jesus was not the son of god and that eternity in hell is the punishment for such beliefs.

Quoting Sam Harris,
Why don't you lose any sleep over whether to convert to Islam? Can you prove that Allah is not the one, true God? Can you prove that the archangel Gabriel did not visit Muhammad in his cave? Of course not. But you need not prove any of these things to reject the beliefs of Muslims as absurd. The burden is on them to prove that their beliefs about God and Muhammad are valid. They have not done this. They cannot do this. Muslims are simply not making claims about reality that can be corroborated. This is perfectly apparent to anyone who has not anesthetized himself with the dogma of Islam.


Have you ever even given Islam a serious look? Of course not, they are just wrong. Isn't it obvious? I mean, how can one believe such nonsense? Almost ironically, they look back at you with the same glasses

The truth is that you already understand my atheism because you are atheist in respect to Islam.

Opening post

This blog is primarily a forum for thoughts on religion. I am well versed on the subject and often need somewhere to write my thoughts, frustrations and incites. Since many, if not most, of my friends and family are highly religious, I hope that this blog will help them understand how I can be so cynical about something they hold so dear.

Unlike many atheists and agnostics, my reasons for rejection of religion are not based on bad experiences with the church, the "hypocrisy" of many in the church, or simply having been brought up areligious. Instead, I have gradually come to my conclusions through trying to resolve conflicts. Within Christianity I see conflicts internally with scripture and Christian dogma. Additionally, I see conflicts with physics, philosophy, science, and in the end common sense.

In high-school I pretty much ignored the conflicts altogether and followed a religious perspective handed down to me from my parents and grandparents.

In college I began to question the internal conflicts in dogma and scripture which lead me to the point of becoming a "liberal Christian".

In medical school I started to better understand the big picture and realized the cowardice of trying to hang onto a religion whose tenants I no longer believed. I could see the conflicts but was afraid to let go because this is all that I had known, and I irrationally was still fearful of the Christian concept of Hell. Once I cut the cord, the relief was like nothing many of you have experienced. I felt like a prisoner freed from a lifetime imprisonment.

Once you change your perspective from one trying to defend what you believe to that of an impartial observer, the conflicts and inconsistencies become so clear!

I realize that many of you reading this blog are still in the defense mode and therefor will not fully grasp the logic I hope to convey through this blog, however this will not stop me from attempting to do so.